Food For Thought...

... a busy week with a lot of food related fun!

My Wednesday Night children made Lenten Snack Mix. ( I am the Queen of "teaching" snack mixes - haha. But seriously, if they eat it they will learn it! When I do my trainings for Preschool teachers I tell them all about my snack mixes!!)
I print out a label with the meaning of each ingredient and we stick it on a baggie or a cup.



Then I line up different trays and containers on a low table. I like the children to make the snack mix themselves. We use an assembly line. So there's another lesson tie in. I put different "tools" in the ingredients so that it is a manipulative/ motor skills activity as well.

You can see that the less expensive or healthier components have the larger scoops or spoons.

I love to throw tongs into the line up.

I put little spoons or itty bitty tongs in things like M&M's or chocolate coins - I make you work for those!!

To add a little math to the lesson I will put a Post-It Note in front of each container with a number on it and that's how many "scoops" you count out.

The beauty of snack mixes, unlike baking projects, is that a child can leave out any ingredient they do not care for and it still turns out. We often make a baggie to take home so that the lesson travels home, too.
This was the first time I have made a Lenten Snack Mix and it was a hit. Didn't hurt that it had purple candy and chocolate coins in it!! Balanced out the healthy raisins!!

And then on the opposite end of the food spectrum from giving up something for Lent, 

 here is a multi-colored, over sugared, gooey treat I made for the Bake Sale at our Mission Fundraiser Silent Auction that we had this past weekend. It is a combination of two things I saw on the internet - 1 from Pinterest and one from Michelle Allen's blog.

I used Fruity Kix Cereal and then  followed the directions for Rice Krispie treats.

The pictures are not good because I made them at midnight :( and I didn't want to use my "good" camera because I had melted marshmallow everywhere.

I made the gooey mess into balls ( that's what Michelle Allen did and added a stick like a popcorn ball) and then I put a sugar cone on top of them to create an ice cream cone looking treat like I saw on Pinterest but they used candy instead.

It was midnight and extremely humid ( we actually had a tornado watch it was so balmy in ATL ) and the balls wouldn't stay shaped and the cones kept wobbling off. So I made a cup of hot tea and sat up with my gooey mess to keep shoving those cones back into the cereal balls. All the time thinking that next year I will just donate $20.00 to the bake sale and call it good :)

I finally decided that I was going to bed and I'd see what I had in the morning :)

Luckily they firmed up pretty well so I packaged them in cone shaped cello bags and tied them up with bright curly ribbon and multi colored star garland to make them look FUN!! ( That is my basic bake sale technique - make it look really fun and entice the children because my stuff is up on that table with things made by serious "church cooks" - you know the kind that make perfect pound cakes and 40 ingredient recipes from
Southern Living Cookbooks!!!!

Ta-da!!! another glare-y picture but they were a hit and the kiddos loved their
gooey fruitiness!!
 I'm still not making them again, though!!